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The City of Toronto had to hire consultants to keep tabs on Carillion, the giant firm hired to rebuild the transit hub. Carillion could yet be fired.

In this June 2013 photo, Front St. is torn up in front of the century-old Union Station for work on the new TTC subway platform and associated utility work below the street and in the adjacent "moat" area. (TARA WALTON / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Commuters have had to deal with construction at and around Union Station for years now, with no end in sight for two years.
(Vince Talotta / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Union Station is the busiest transit hub in Canada. (David Cooper / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Work proceeds this week on the roof of the train shed at Union Station, part of which is being restored while a central section is becoming an atrium.
(Colin McConnell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The new PATH entrance to the subway and the temporary stairs at either end of Union Station. (David Cooper / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The new glass ceiling covering track level under construction. The rebirth of Union is one of the single “most complicated” projects in the country, according to a December city staff report.
(David Cooper / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The City of Toronto had to hire two top construction consultants to rein in costs and speed up progress on the $795-million Union Station revitalization project, according to documents and interviews with city officials.
(Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

onstruction at Union Station at the intersection of York and Front Sts. (Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The city hired consultants to keep tabs on Carillion, the giant firm hired for the mammoth project of revamping Union Station.
(Steve Russell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The City of Toronto had to hire two top construction consultants to rein in costs and speed up progress on the $795 million Union Station revitalization project, according to documents and interviews with city officials.

Of chief concern was Carillion Canada, the giant company hired in 2010 to rebuild the century-old train station and install a new shopping concourse and other features. Though some issues laid out in year-old documents obtained by the Star have been fixed, on the advice of the consultants, Carillion may get its walking papers at the end of the year.

“We may decide to change the engine on the train,” said Richard Coveduck, a plain-speaking, city bureaucrat and engineer with 40 years’ experience. Coveduck is the city’s director of design and construction.

“I can choose not to continue with (Carillion),” Coveduck said in an interview. He draws that authority from a city council decision last December giving him that power.

Carillion declined to speak to the Star about this issue, referring all questions back to the city.

The re-imagined Union Station — which includes improvements for TTC, GO Transit and VIA Rail users — includes a second subway platform to relieve overcrowding, a new atrium train shed for GO Transit, a second passenger concourse, glass-covered entrances between the subway and GO concourse, a new retail space below the station and expansion of the PATH system. It is scheduled to be fully complete by the end of 2016.

Costs have continued to climb as the plan has evolved, jumping a further $80 million in October.

Documents from the March-May 2013 time period lay out a series of problems with the mammoth project. For example, at one point, the city expected 12 structural columns to have been completed and only two were. In another instance, a review of Carillion’s work progress revealed poor planning.

“(Carillion Canada Inc.’s) revised baseline schedule continues to be incomplete in content, contains constrained dates without supporting logic, and is not adequate to track actual progress against planned dates,” Stantec consulting engineer Greig Cooke concluded in a memo to the city on April 11, 2013. The memo and other documents were released following a Toronto Star freedom of information request.

The memo went on to say that dates for major milestones such as GO Transit’s new York Concourse “are unclear and continue to slip with each schedule revision by Carillion.”

Other priorities identified by the city — including a connection to the northwest PATH system — had been forgotten altogether in the new plan, Cooke wrote.

Stantec, and cost consultant A.W. Hooker, were on the job for several months when that memo was written.

In a review of their documents, the Star found the city and its consultants taking issue with how the project — which has caused enormous disruption to commuters — was proceeding. For example, some work took place without paying attention to how it would affect other work. These so-called “interference” issues resulted in some work having to be done twice.

Carillion’s job is to provide construction management services, working with the project architect and hiring myriad subtrades to perform specific tasks. At one point, the city’s Coveduck said they discovered planned work by a trade to the below-street-level front area of the train station — termed “the moat” — was going to be “humongously overbudget.” He said the city put a stop to that and had the contract rebid.

Carillion is responsible for overseeing $495 million worth of the $795 million project. Most of that work will be done by late this year, at which time Coveduck said the city may look elsewhere for a builder.

The two consulting companies were brought in after Coveduck and his staff developed “some concerns with Carillion’s performance” in late 2012.

“There were time and budget issues and some missing information, documents. We felt they were not fulfilling all of the duties,” Coveduck said.

While the consultants have cost the city money — the Star has not been able to determine how much — Coveduck said they will save dollars in the long run.

“It is all about protecting the public purse,” he said.

Soon after the city began having concerns with Carillion’s performance, the city’s auditor general produced a report raising issues about the progress of the giant renovation.

Coveduck said, “We then had confirmation from two sources that there were some deficiencies with Carillion.”

The documents obtained by the Star reveal that despite even after the consultants were hired, problems continued. The practice appears to be that when city workers have concerns, they reach out to one of the consultants.

In discussing some future timelines for completed jobs, the project’s manager of construction for the city, John Spinelli, wrote to consultant Cooke in an email looking for help.

Spinelli asked Cooke if a timeline set out by Carillion was “sensible” or “realistic.” He had specific concerns about being able to hand over the new York Concourse to GO Transit at the end of 2013, as was then planned.

“You have been here for a while now, so I am relying on you to provide some insight to these questions,” Spinelli wrote.

He worried about delays if the city sent Carillion back to the drawing board.

“Are we better off just accepting the current schedules as the new Baseline . . . and hold Carillion’s feet to the fire to deliver based upon this schedule without excuse?”

Cooke responded later that day, asking to discuss the matter in person with other city managers and consultants. None of people listed as involved answered questions from the Star on Tuesday.

Other emails between the project’s leads indicate an escalating frustration with Carillion over delays and a “breakdown of communications.”

At one point, on April 30, the city’s principal engineer, Rick Tolkunow, sent an email to Stantec and other city managers asking if there had been an update on budget discrepancies before sending Carillion a “nasty email.”

Metrolinx plans have called for the new York St. concourse to open by the end of the year. But a spokesperson for the provincial agency said on Tuesday evening, that the timing depends on the city.

“We are awaiting a plan from the city and their contractor on the schedule to complete the work which would allow Metrolinx to prepare the York concourse for opening. Once we receive that plan we will be in a better position to determine the final timing on opening of the new York concourse,” said Anne Marie Aikins.

City auditor Jeff Griffiths told the Star his office is digging into the issue and by June will know how many of his 2012 accountability recommendations regarding Union Station have been followed.

“I have people out in the field right now,” Griffiths said in an interview.

Union Station is the busiest transit hub in Canada, and its rebirth is one of the single “most complicated” projects in the country, according to a December city staff report.

The city’s Coveduck said the project is slightly behind in some of its targets, but enough “float” has been built into the plan that the 2016 completion deadline will be met.

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